The sole legitimate reason to see Into the Blue is to see stars Paul Walker (The Fast and the Furious) and Jessica Alba (Honey, Sin City) frolicking in swimwear in a beautiful Caribbean setting. No weak treasure-hunting or drug-running adventure story can tarnish their hard-bodied good looks. Otherwise, Into the Blue is an action movie like many others, unremarkable except that it compels you to believe that Walker’s character, Jared, can hold his breath underwater for several minutes while rescuing girls, fighting bad guys, diving like a dolphin, etc., without aid of any Water World mutation.
Jared is a would-be treasure-hunter obsessed with finding long-lost pirate gold, but relegated to menial jobs and a trailer until he lands his booty — that is, booty other than his girlfriend, Sam (Alba). Jared’s old buddy comes to visit with a bad-news girl toy, and the foursome unexpectedly hit upon the score of a lifetime — an old pirate ship loaded with treasure. The rub: It’s buried right next to a downed drug-running plane. They’re left in a bind, afraid that news of the plane wreck could lead unwanted others to the treasure ship, and they’d be left with nothing.
The requisite menacing sharks are circling; so are rival treasure hunters and evil drug lords. What to do? Alba and Walker work it out with loads of goody-goody mushy debate. Of course, the money doesn’t matter as long as they’re together, right? Into the Blue could have done better with more action and not so much talky-talky.
With so much tanned skin and buff beauty to behold, it’s unfortunate that the most striking thing is the movie’s contrast to last year’s Caribbean diving thriller, Open Water. The Blair Witch of shark attack movies brought far more terror and spine tingles with far less star power and cash. Some movies get the looks, others get the brains, it seems.
Clare Pfeiffer Ramsey writes about film for Metro Times. E-mail [email protected].
